Situated in a westside warehouse district of Grand Rapids (home to many creative studios and artists’ collectives/businesses), Civic Studio welcomes Whitney Biennial artist Beatriz Santiago Muñoz to Grand Valley State University’s (GVSU) 2016-17 Visiting Artists series, Art and the Radical -- a thought-provoking program of lectures from some of the world’s best artists working on projects that aim to increase dialogue as they transform our understanding of art and our world.
Beatriz Santiago Muñoz’s research-based works are created through lengthy observational periods and employ the camera to document her subjects.
Her film work is grounded in a rooted-in reality-approach that conveys a sense of place (albeit places often in decay) and is combined with a pace out of sync (in a good way) with many who work within this narrative-producing format.
Born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Muñoz creates work that explores themes of recuperation from trauma, regeneration, and the ways in which our connections to the past are actively produced, maintained and refuted. Her use of the camera, a device we are all familiar with at this point, according to GVSU Professor Paul Wittenbraker, acts as a “linguistic, political and conceptual frame through which actions or events are seen.”
It is also rare that our region has a visiting artist in advance of the Whitney Biennial. For the 2017 Biennial, the formation of the self and the individual’s place in an upending society are the top themes for the
2017 Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City (March 17 - June 11, 2017).
This is a tremendous opportunity for local artists and fans of contemporary art to listen and learn from one who is poised to enter the world art stage during a time of great social upheavals. I am sure this is to be an insightful lecture.
This speaker series has already presented Jen Delos Reyes and Nicolas Lamper to our region in the fall of 2016 and will welcome Jeanne Vaccaro later this semester.
The event is free, but limited seating so please RSVP via their event page.